Growing pains (Saturated Market)

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Growing pains

Blogging I had a teacher tell me that if a business decides not to change anything, they've decided to fail. I admit that innovation is a crucial component of any business...but it has to be done right. While I'm still thinking about blogs, let me discuss one online community that's had to endure a lot of moans and rust in their quest to grow.

Livejournal has been around for less than a decade, but it's already undergone some massive changes. A brief history can be found by visiting this Wikipedia article, or from this little snippet I wrote a couple months ago in response to a "lj friend"'s complaints about recent changes:

"Hey, we're doing great! You have to pay to get in, or know someone who's a member. We feel like an exclusive club, and the people who get invited in for a free account will see how awesome a paid account is, and will sign up!"

Time passes...

"Oh, uh...hm. Not enough people are buying accounts. Okay, no problem. Let's open it up for EVERYONE! That will expand our user base, which will mean more people buying."

Time passes...

"Ah. Geez. Okay, um, now we have an exponentially larger userbase, but our subscription rate hasn't increased enough to cover our substantially higher server and bandwidth costs. Let's get someone to buy us!"

Six Apart writes a cheque...

"Hey, thanks guys. That solved nothing. Screw it, we're putting in ads to generate revenue. And maybe we can have people pay to not see the ads! That will drive up subscription!"

Now, I'm the first to admit this isn't entirely the true story. Hell, I was corrected by Wikipedia for Pete's sake. Anyhoo, long story short, livejournal has been hell-bent on attracting new users, which has been difficult based both on their reputation and increased competition from MySpace and Facebook.

Livejournal suffers from two major internal problems that I contend were not self-evident at the outset: creation abuse and stubborn users. The first relates to a point I made in my first post: since users can sign up for any number of accounts with a myriad of usernames, the system often becomes filled with several accounts, many of which become abandoned. This essentially suffocates the servers by filling them with dead weight. And thanks to their policy never to delete journals (this can only be done by the user who created it), it just sits there forever. I respect this policy, as it accounts for occasional users as well as preserving the entries of people who have passed on, which is a comfort for friends. But there is a lot of abuse, regardless.

The other problem is the real meat of this entry. Livejournal users (at least those who have been around for some time) are notoriously resistant to change. The interfaces and menus have been altered a couple times, I assume to provide ease of use, especially for newcomers. And each time a change is made, there is always an outcry, as users complain in their personal journals, in their friends' comment pages, and on the developer and support pages. "I hate how it looks," "they're pandering to the MySpace generation," "I miss the good old days." Back in my day, I had to walk uphill both ways to get to my blog.

So how does Livejournal cope with the fact that their attempts to woo new users is met with such harsh criticism by many of their current users? Or, rather, do they have to? To be frank (but not that Frank), I don't think it's even a real issue. For all the complaints and threats to leave as soon as their subscription runs down, I don't think there's been a substantial exodus from the site.

So why take all this time to talk about it? Well, first of all, because I CAN. Second, this demonstrates that just because your customers dislike something, doesn't mean they're ready to walk. Not to say that you should disregard your customers/clients entirely (that would be foolish). But don't scrap a new plan just because of a naysayer or two. This applies equally to personal plans, not just business.

Until next time,